The bid approach by US pharmaceuticals giant Pfizer (US: PFE) for rival British drugs company AstraZeneca (AZN) was a surprise for many. It successfully buoyed Astra’s share price by 15 per cent when the news first broke and, at the time of writing, the share price continues to rise the more the rumours rumble on.
We advised picking up the shares (Buy, 3,754p, 16 April) shortly before news of the £60bn bid came to light. It turns out Pfizer originally approached AstraZeneca in January this year with a bid which, at the time, offered a hefty 30 per cent premium to Astra’s current share price. Now that premium has been realised in the current share price, it is left to Pfizer to come up with a more generous offer to tempt Astra into one of the biggest deals in pharmaceutical history.
If the deal goes ahead, Pfizer has advised keeping the enlarged company domiciled in the UK, citing the ‘favourable’ tax environment. But the transaction would render Britain with only one home-grown big pharma entrant - GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) - in the global life sciences sector.
